Lot 181: JAY DEFEO

Untitled
This work is unique and is registered in The Jay DeFoe Trust under Estate number P1226I.

6 3/8 x 6 3/8 in. (16.2 x 16.2 cm)

gelatin silver print, mounted by the artist

1973

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective, February 28– June 2, 2013 (another example of this image exhibited)

Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective, exh. cat., New York, 2013, p. 190 (another example of this image illustrated)

Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco
Acquired from the above by the present owner

The present lot by Jay DeFeo, Untitled, 1973, is but a small window into the artist’s impressively vast and dynamic oeuvre. Her unconventional approach to materials and mediums as well as her intensely physical working method make DeFeo a unique and intriguing figure in postwar American art. Consisting of collages, drawings, paintings, photographs, sculptures, and jewelry, the artistic output by DeFeo is widely diverse and almost endless, although she is best known today for a handful of very important works. One such work, named after a Glenn Miller composition, is Tuxedo Junction, 1965-1974, from which the present lot is derived. For this visually complex piece, DeFeo removed torn pieces of painted paper she had amassed in her San Francisco home many years. She sprayed these fragments of collected paper with fixative to include moments of dust and dirt, singed the matted materials, and subsequently constructed them onto a triptych of panels, similar to the renowned burned-paper series artist John Cage would later create. Untitled, 1973, depicts an exquisite close-up detail of the large work from which it is inspired, giving the viewer a dramatic taste of the original work’s textural intricacy and fascinating beauty, as well as a direct link to DeFeo’s brilliantly intensive process.